DOST thou not hear? Amid dun, lonely hills Far off a melancholy music shrills, As for a joy that no fruition fills. Who live in that far country of the wind? The unclaimed hopes, the powers but half-divined, The shy, heroic passions of mankind. And all are young in those reverberant bands; None marshals them, no mellow voice commands; They whirl and eddy as the shifting sands. There, there is ruin, and no ivy clings; There pass the mourners for untimely things, There breaks the stricken cry of crownless kings. But ever and anon there spreads a boom Of wonder through the air, arraigning doom With ineffectual plaint as from a tomb. |